Matthew Day

Associate Professor of Religion
Dr. Matthew Day (and Freddie)

Contact Information

Area
Religion, Ethics, and Philosophy
Faculty
Office Location
120B Dodd Hall
Email

Background

I tend to find specific questions all-consuming at one moment and ontologically dull at another. This helps to explain why I've written about such disparate topics as:

  • Evolutionary taxonomy, anti-essentialism, and the religion category;

  • Jacobean natural philosophy, urban commerce, and the "science" of money;

  • The peculiar collision between Biblical criticism and evolutionary theory in the nineteenth century;

  • The medicalization of religio-political dissent in Georgian England;

  • Household debt as a key component of class and capital after the Second World War

My primary areas of interest are modern political and social theory, broadly construed. I am chuffed to report that my book–No Bosses, No Gods: Marx, Engels, and the Twenty-first Century Study of Religion– will be published as part of De Gruyter's Religion & Reason series in late April or early May 2023. Professionally speaking, I have no idea what comes next.

I adore Oaxacan food, detest having my picture taken, and wish I'd learned Russian somewhere along the way. My wife and I have two sons and a modestly clever Golden Retriever named Duck. We spend our summers in Downeast Maine renovating a mid-nineteenth-century farmhouse and sailing the prickly waters of Cobscook Bay. 

 

Recent Graduate Seminars

  • Marx, Weber, Bourdieu
  • The Landscapes of American Capitalism


Courses

Fall 2023
  • REL3142: Religion, Self and Society
  • REL3171: Topics in Ethics: Religion & Revolution (Honors)
Spring 2023
  • REL3142: Religion, Self and Society
  • REL3171: Topics in Ethics: Religion & Revolution